He was arrested on charge of plotting terror attacks

Mohammad Fahad, the Pakistani prisoner at Hindalga central jail here, is on a fast from Wednesday. Fahad was shifted to the prisoners’ ward at the district government hospital under tight security after he refused to take intravenous fluids on Thursday. Nobody is allowed to meet him except doctors and the hospital staff.

The 31-year-old was arrested by the Mysore police on October 27, 2006, on the charge of plotting terror attacks in Mysore and Bangalore.

He was shifted to Hindalga from Gulbarga in November last year owing to security reasons. Fahad was arrested along with Ali Hussein of Kashmir, who is now in a Srinagar jail.

Meanwhile, sources told The Hindu that Fahad wrote a letter to his mother Zubeidar Khanum in Karachi, Pakistan, last month, expressing fears about his life as he was lodged near the cells of some death convicts. Fahad had been pleading with the doctors and the jail authorities to allow him to speak to his mother over telephone.

However, the request was turned down as the authorities did not have permission from the higher-ups.

A doctor on duty said Fahad was admitted to the hospital at about 10 p.m. on Thursday. Since he was not taking food, they were administering IV fluids on him. His health condition is stated to be “normal”.

Meanwhile, the police have been maintaining a strict vigil in and around the jail in view of the murderous attack on Sarabjit Singh in a Lahore jail and the retaliatory attack on Pakistani prisoner Sanaullah Ranjay in Jammu.

While jail superintendent H. Veerabhadraswamy did not receive any calls, sources in the jail said nobody came to see Fahad ever since he came here. A few parcels sent by post were handed over to him after inspection.

At the same time, there are unconfirmed reports that four jail staff had been suspended on the charge of dereliction of duty.